- Individual contributor versus manager.
Today we'll take a detailed look about the differences
between these roles.
(upbeat music)
So we will contrast the role of individual contributor
and manager and I'm actually going to talk in detail
about the middle role, a third role too,
the position most individual contributors use
to advance into actual leadership positions.
And by the end I hope that you'll see some clear steps
that you can picture to move forward in your career.
So first, let's talk about six aspects
of being an individual contributor.
Number one, you'll likely have a specific subject
that you're expected to be an expert in,
you're a subject matter expert as they say.
And this means you're working in an area of strength
where you know you add value.
You might have a website design background,
or I.T, or editing, there are endless individual roles
that you can play.
In many small organizations you might be a solo person
who functions essentially as an entire department
like the marketing department.
You may also play multiple individual roles,
maybe you do some marketing
but you also do some website design,
it all depends on the size of your organization
and your job description.
Number two, you may work alone,
maybe in your own space
for a couple of hours a day at a time.
In my first teaching job, I literally had a desk
in what was once a closet and I loved it,
I got a lot of work done there for hours at a time
in my little "Harry Potter" room under the stairs.
Number three, tasks get delegated to you.
So being an individual contributor
means your supervisor delegates work to you,
this means you are held accountable for the quality
of your individual work
and you usually have to answer
for just your piece of the puzzle.
Number four, you work for someone else in their system.
Some people find this comforting,
they don't wanna be the boss,
but it also means you have to fit in
to whatever system or workflow that is already set up
in place and you may not have much say
in how that work gets sent to you.
Number five, you're still expected
to work well with others.
I know some people who say,
"I get my work done and that's all that matters,"
but that is just not true,
you have to have good communication skills
and relationship skills.
This is a big factor
that prevents some individual contributors
from advancing in their careers.
In fact, I have a free resource, a PDF download,
that explains the five essential communication skills
that every professional should work on
and I've put a link to that in the description below.
Of course the key item that really clearly distinguishes
individual contributors is that they are not
anybody's boss.
Now that might seem obvious,
but there're some confusion job titles out there,
social media manager, account manager,
these job titles can be misleading.
But even with a title like that,
unless you supervise people directly,
or at least supervise major aspects of project
and that you've pulled together a team of people,
then you're still probably an individual contributor.
So being an individual contributor
may be a really good fit for you,
but people often ask this question,
can you be a leader as an individual contributor?
And the answer is yes, 100%.
But most of that leadership will be leading by example,
you'll lead mainly through your positive influence
and you can have a major impact this way,
but you'll have to do it
without an official leadership position.
Now there's a middle step here
that's neither purely individual contributor
or purely manager.
Before people get promoted to manager,
employees sometimes become what I'll loosely call
a project manager, you could call it a project leader,
a committee chair, maybe your title doesn't even change,
but what changes is the scope of the work that you're doing.
This is the person who gets asked to move
an overall project forward
and it involves coordinating other people.
You might be in charge of launching a new product,
you might be asked to run an event
and to do that, you'll be the person to pull together a team
and keep it on track to get the work done.
And it's certainly a type of leadership,
but you're not directly supervising the people
on your team, that's the difference.
But in this type of position,
either formal or informal,
it's often the way that an individual contributor
pivots into an official management position,
you're showing the higher level leaders that you can lead,
you can make an organizational level impact
beyond your personal area of expertise.
This is often a testing period
to see if you're ready for the next level.
Now I'm really emphasizing this middle step
because a lot of individual contributors don't realize
that when they're being asked to lead a project,
that they're really being asked to demonstrate
their leadership skills.
A lot of employees don't yet understand this
and I've heard them complain,
"Well, I'm doing the work of a manager,
"but they're not paying me the same as a manager."
Okay, so of course sometimes organizations
do exploit people and I get that,
I'm not talking about when somebody else is slacking off
and you end up doing their job too.
What I'm talking about is how leading,
being in charge of a real project is an opportunity,
maybe a necessary step for you to demonstrate
your leadership skills.
So if you show
that you can drive a few projects successfully,
you'll be on the top of the list for a promotion,
when a leadership position becomes open.
The bottom line is that it's really hard
for the leaders to promote you
if they have not seen a track record of your leadership.
So look for ways to make clear leadership contributions
at that middle level,
what I will loosely call, project manager.
Now let's turn to the role of manager
and look at six key aspects of that.
Number one, you supervise people,
you have at least one or more direct reports,
employees who work under you, as they say.
In one sense this means that your time is no longer your own
and you're not just gonna be telling people what to do
and then they go and do it,
nowadays, a supervisor is a teacher, a mentor,
a coach, a professional development advocate
for everybody you supervise.
And in fact you'll be so busy supervising
that many managers miss doing the actual work
they used to do.
I know one individual contributor who absolutely
does not want to be the boss,
that's a whole other level
and she enjoys just working directly with her clients.
As a manager, you spend most of your time supervising.
Number two, you get to make decisions.
It's in your job description,
you're granted certain official power and authority
to interview, hire, evaluate, promote or even fire people,
or at least do that in collaboration with a department
like human resources.
Now you might like the idea of that little bit of authority,
but as Spider-Man's uncle said,
"With great power, comes great responsibility."
So let's talk about accountability,
you'll be held accountable as a manager
for the overall success or failure of your team,
of your people, you are responsible.
You get evaluated based upon how everything is going,
you cannot pass the buck
or blame a subordinate in your department
if the team is not meeting its goals,
even if one of your direct reports is acting up.
It might not be your fault,
but it's your responsibility to fix it.
Number four, you move from being a specialist
to a generalist.
Managers have to understand a little bit about everything,
you have the understand the jobs of the people
you're supervising, and you'll be collaborating
with managers in other departments,
managers like you.
As a generalist,
you have to speak about the overall concerns
of the business, about the cares of the organization,
and that means becoming knowledgeable
and conversational about lots of areas.
Number five,
you'll be spending a lot more time communicating.
You'll be running group meetings, standing and presenting,
training your people, meeting one-on-one a lot.
My wife was just trying to schedule with her manager
and she could see that her manager's schedule on the screen
was completely packed with meetings throughout
her entire week.
Her manager was going to be leading,
or least be a major contributor
to every single one of those meetings.
So as a manager, you become the chief communication officer
of your department
and it's very likely you didn't go to school
or get training for this level of communication
and that's really what this channel is all about,
communication skills for leaders,
essentially for leaders who didn't get an education
in communication.
And number six, you'll be stuck in middle.
You'll have at least three internal stakeholder groups
to work well with, A,
the people you supervise below you as they say,
B, the people above you,
and C, the other managers across from you.
These other managers of other departments,
they don't work for you,
and the power dynamic is ambiguous,
but you have to work well with them
if you want to get anything meaningful done.
And it's really challenging to satisfy
all three of these stakeholder groups.
So I see this as a three step process, not two.
individual contributor, project manager, and then manager,
and the best way to move up, you might say,
is this middle step,
as you look for ways to demonstrate your leadership skills
and drive projects,
and realize that once you become a manager,
your life is going to change
and many of those changes will mean saying goodbye
to some of what you liked best about your job
as an individual contributor.
So the question is for you,
where do you see yourself in this?
Where are you in your career?
I look forward to reading your comments below.
And again,
feel free to take a look at that free PDF download
on the essential professional communication skills
that I mentioned.
So thanks, God bless, and I will see you in the next video.